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....That rivalry intensified in the “dirty tricks” battle in the 1980s, which saw Branson win a large libel settlement from BA. He later presented the airline’s first tie-up with Delta, announced in 2012, as a response to the national carrier’s dominance from Heathrow to the US. ...
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.... What is a cutomer’s number one concern? That they get you there safely. “There has been a lot of automation, and a number of landings at Heathrow are now on auto-land. ...
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....We have seen how the pound has been subject to volatility since the Brexit referendum. The Travelex foreign exchange booths at Heathrow, Manchester and Glasgow were offering almost exactly €1 to the pound. ...
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.... The planning of airport capacity – overwhelmingly for leisure travel – has no rationale. It is London-centred, dictated by Heathrow lobbyists seeking to boost demand; it increases west London congestion and ignores installed capacity at Stansted. ...
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....Striking British Airways cabin crew have announced a further two weeks of action for the first half of August in their battle over pay and sanctions at the airline. Crew in the lower-paid mixed fleet working out of Heathrow started the latest 14-day walkout on 19 July, their 46th day on strike since January, meaning a month of strikes will now take place during the summer holiday peak. ...
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....British Airways cabin crew will strike for a further two weeks in August, including over the bank holiday weekend, in a long-running dispute over pay and staff sanctions. Crew in the lower-paid mixed fleet, working out of Heathrow on long and short-haul flights, are already in the middle of a lengthy walkout and will extend the strike to cover the period from Wednesday 16 August to Wednesday 30 August. ...
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....The biannual survey from Transport Focus, which between January and April asked more than 27,000 passengers across Britain to rate their last journey, found that passengers were significantly happier with punctuality and reliability than last spring, giving the best overall scores for more than four years. The highest satisfaction scores were achieved by Hull Trains and Heathrow Express, both on 97%. ...
[Read full article on Guardian]

....British Airways cabin crew will strike for a further two weeks in August, including over the bank holiday weekend, in a long-running dispute over pay and staff sanctions. Crew in the lower-paid mixed fleet, working out of Heathrow on long and short-haul flights, are already in the middle of a lengthy walkout and will extend the strike to cover the period from Wednesday 16 August to Wednesday 30 August. ...

.... The planning of airport capacity – overwhelmingly for leisure travel – has no rationale. It is London-centred, dictated by Heathrow lobbyists seeking to boost demand; it increases west London congestion and ignores installed capacity at Stansted. ...

....That rivalry intensified in the “dirty tricks” battle in the 1980s, which saw Branson win a large libel settlement from BA. He later presented the airline’s first tie-up with Delta, announced in 2012, as a response to the national carrier’s dominance from Heathrow to the US. ...

....The biannual survey from Transport Focus, which between January and April asked more than 27,000 passengers across Britain to rate their last journey, found that passengers were significantly happier with punctuality and reliability than last spring, giving the best overall scores for more than four years. The highest satisfaction scores were achieved by Hull Trains and Heathrow Express, both on 97%. ...

....We have seen how the pound has been subject to volatility since the Brexit referendum. The Travelex foreign exchange booths at Heathrow, Manchester and Glasgow were offering almost exactly €1 to the pound. ...

....Striking British Airways cabin crew have announced a further two weeks of action for the first half of August in their battle over pay and sanctions at the airline. Crew in the lower-paid mixed fleet working out of Heathrow started the latest 14-day walkout on 19 July, their 46th day on strike since January, meaning a month of strikes will now take place during the summer holiday peak. ...

. Night flights from Heathrow will continue until the airport is expanded, the government has confirmed, as it published new rules to encourage quieter aircraft across London’s three biggest airports. ...

....BA created the mixed fleet of cabin staff in the wake of a bitter dispute over pay and conditions for all cabin staff that ran from 2009 to 2011. They fly only out of Heathrow, and on both short-haul and long-haul routes, but not in the same planes as colleagues on the legacy conditions of employment. ...

.... To clear the way the Green Commute Initiative (GCI) has recently been launched, specifically targeting the e-bike market with a mission to help get more commuters out of their cars – thereby cutting air pollution and traffic congestion. Unlike other cycle-to-work schemes there is no £1,000 cap, and the GCI has already signed up some big name organisations including Heathrow airport, Heathrow Express and the City of London. ...

.... I look at my grandchildren now – veterans long before they left school of south-east Asia, America, Europe from Norway to Romania; three of them Spanish in Barcelona – and pinch myself. Their worlds began early at Heathrow or El Prat. ...

.... The saga that unfolded highlights the inadequacy of consumer redress available when airlines dispute legal responsibilities. “The flight from Heathrow to Madrid was cancelled due to brake failure after we’d spent 45 minutes on the runway,” says Natalie, a teacher from Ilford in Essex. ...

.... The government should postpone its fantastically expensive high-speed rail project, and redirect the money to northern intercity links. It should call a halt to an ever more inflated Heathrow. ...

....Walsh said IAG would continue to expand in low-cost, long-haul flying after “an incredible customer response” to the launch of its new airline brand Level in Spain last month, with 52,000 tickets sold in the first 12 hours of sale. Walsh also took the opportunity to attack the proposals for a third runway at Heathrow. ...

....It has been a busy couple of weeks for Walsh, since the bank holiday weekend meltdown of BA’s computer systems – evidently the result of a slip by a technician – that left planes grounded and tens of thousands of passengers’ holiday plans in tatters. The debacle’s enduring image was of crowds of would-be travellers stuck in Heathrow’s Terminal 5, with airline staff clueless what to advise – later compounded by the widespread loss of luggage and mealy-mouthed discussions of compensation. ...

....While air freight makes up just 1% of UK imports and exports in terms of tonnage shipped, it accounts for 40% of imports and exports in terms of their value. In the UK, Heathrow Airport is the dominant player in this trade with £101bn worth of goods passing through in a year. ...

....”. Crisis response was on the agenda after BA stranded 75,000 passengers when a technician switched a power supply off and on at a data centre, scrambling its systems and forcing it to cancel all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick at the start of the bank holiday weekend. ...

.... The airline group employs more than 40,000 people worldwide. The chief executive of Qatar Airways, Akbar al-Baker, is also a non-executive director of Heathrow Airport Holdings, which operates London's biggest airport. ...

....BA has already launched its own internal investigation, led by its chief executive Alex Cruz. Following the computer crash, which caused travel chaos for people travelling from Heathrow and Gatwick, Mr Walsh gave his full backing to Mr Cruz. ...

....And for many who had already checked in their baggage, there was the added frustration that it was sent on to their destinations while they were still stranded. The chaos at Gatwick and Heathrow put a renewed spotlight on where passengers stand when faced with these problems. ...

.... By 7. 30am, he had packed his suitcase, complete with laptop and paperwork, into the boot of his car and left his home in Gloucester, picking up two colleagues en route for the 98-mile drive to Heathrow. ...

.... The airline put back my flight in October from Lima to Gatwick by 24 hours. I got an indirect flight via Madrid, with its sister airline, Iberia, arriving in Heathrow slightly later than planned. ...

....The airline is continuing to investigate the cause, with reports suggesting a maintenance worker had inadvertently switched off the power supply. But CBRE, the contractor which manages the facilities at BA’s ageing Boadicea House data centre near Heathrow, said claims that the cause had been determined were “not founded in fact”. ...

....What level of compensation the airline intends to provide will be of intense interest to customers still waiting for their bags to be returned – even though they were unable to fly. Paul Sutherland, 44, a gym owner and Ultimate Fighting Championship official from Gloucester, spent 12 hours stuck at Heathrow instead of flying to Sweden, missing a bout where he was due to be a judge. ...

. It is one of the worst IT meltdowns to hit British Airways in recent memory - thousands of passengers had flights disrupted or cancelled at the weekend and there were chaotic scenes at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. ...

....Only the people in the room know exactly what happened, so these views are based on the information made public, and bucketfuls of IT experience, including at BA. One put it like this: "BA has two data centres near Heathrow, about a kilometre apart, so how could a power surge affect both?". ...

....It has added extra staff to its customer relations department to help process payments. The airline said all of the delayed bags had been processed at Heathrow and were on their way to customers around the world but admitted “it may take some time to complete the process”. ...

....British Airways is still struggling to return baggage to passengers as it attempts to salvage its battered reputation and investigate the cause of a computer system outage that left 75,000 people stranded at the weekend. Cancelled holidays and chaotic scenes at Heathrow and Gatwick airports over the bank holiday weekend have been followed by reports of passengers’ baggage being forwarded to destinations abroad while its owners were unable to travel. ...

...."It is up to them to sort their IT out," she told an election campaign event. Pippa Howe-Velazquez from Andover was travelling with her elderly mother, 69, on Saturday from Heathrow to Majorca, but their trip was cancelled. ...

....Rose Drury, a childcare assistant from Leeds, said she had been attempting to contact the airline about reclaiming her luggage since Saturday. Drury and her sister Olivia had been scheduled to travel from Heathrow to New York on Saturday afternoon, but after they had checked in their bags and cleared security, they waited at the gate for three hours before being told their flight was cancelled. ...

....British Airways’ chief executive says he will not resign despite a “catastrophic” IT system failure that grounded scores of flights and led to cancellations and delays for 75,000 passengers over the bank holiday weekend. Alex Cruz said on Monday he was “profusely apologetic” for the computing glitch, which caused havoc at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, stranding passengers including many families on half-term breaks. ...

.... . "We are refunding or rebooking customers who suffered cancellations on to new services as quickly as possible and have also introduced more flexible rebooking policies for anyone who was due to travel on Saturday, Sunday, today [Monday] and Tuesday who no longer wishes to fly to-from Heathrow or Gatwick," they add. ...

....British Airways could face a bill of at least £100m in compensation, additional customer care and lost business resulting from an IT meltdown that affected more than 1,000 flights over the weekend. All the airline’s flights from Heathrow and Gatwick were grounded on Saturday. ...

.... . "We are refunding or rebooking customers who suffered cancellations on to new services as quickly as possible and have also introduced more flexible rebooking policies for anyone due to travel on Sunday and Monday who no longer wishes to fly to/from Heathrow or Gatwick. ...

....Disruption from a major British Airways IT failure that affected more than 1,000 flights on Saturday has continued into a second day, leaving more passengers stranded. After all the airline’s flights from Heathrow and Gatwick were grounded on Saturday, services resumed but with cancellations and delays. ...

.... I'm told that European governments don't get much say in the matter or much notice of any changes - in fact they're watching the media and Twitter just in case it's sprung on them. Any ban would hit Heathrow the hardest. ...

. Business leaders have called for the next government to build two more runways, demanding that a follow-up Airports Commission be established only months after Heathrow’s third runway was approved. ...

....On Wednesday, United’s reputation suffered another blow after a potentially record-breaking giant rabbit died in its care. The 3ft (90cm) animal, called Simon, was found dead in the cargo hold when the flight arrived at O’Hare airport from London Heathrow, and an investigation has since been launched. ...

....The latest incident to hit United Airlines's reputation came on Wednesday when it announced an investigation into the death of a giant rabbit which was being transported on one of its planes. The 90cm-long bunny, called Simon, was found dead in the cargo hold when the flight arrived at Chicago's O'Hare airport from London Heathrow. ...

....United Airlines has said a potentially record-breaking giant rabbit died in its care, but only after the transatlantic flight it was travelling on had landed. The 3ft (90cm) continental giant rabbit, which was 10 months old and named Simon, died while travelling from London Heathrow to O’Hare airport in Chicago. ...

....Bargain airport prices for favourites such as gin and Toblerone are now likely to be cheaper at the supermarket, Which? has found. A 360g bar of Toblerone cost £4 at Bristol World Duty Free but £3 at Asda, while a 70cl bottle of Tanqueray gin cost £18 at Heathrow Terminal 2 and £15 at Morrisons, the consumer group found. ...

....United Airlines is investigating the death of a giant rabbit which was being transported on one of its planes. The 90cm-long bunny, called Simon, was found dead in the cargo hold when the flight arrived at Chicago's O'Hare airport from London Heathrow. ...

.... But as the cars communicate, update on hazards, and automatically react, is the time coming when a human driver is not just redundant but an active danger?. A driverless transport trial started this month in Greenwich, south-east London, with members of the public invited to climb aboard Harry – a version of the pod vehicles used at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, souped-up with lasers, sensors and £20,000 worth of autonomous technology. ...

....(Source: Thomson Reuters). Its joint venture infrastructure investments include a business park at Heathrow, windfarms bought from Centrica, solar farms in Derbyshire and Essex and a £75m loan to Trafford Housing Trust. ...

.... Every hotelier from Corfu to the Canaries would be screaming for a deal if there were a chance that British tourists wouldn’t arrive in 2019. Similarly, Lufthansa would probably prefer its Heathrow service to continue without interruption. ...

....The schemes are prevalent in London and the south-east of England, where high housing prices incentivise owners to convert office buildings. Other examples of concern include theformer American Airlines office block near Heathrow, which has been turned into 288 flats, and Lewisham House in south-east London, for which an application was lodged for 230 residential units. ...

....As well as Crossrail, which will link west and east London, it is upgrading motorways and working on the Thames Tideway Tunnel. In the next few years it plans to be part of the country's three biggest infrastructure projects: High Speed 2 (HS2), the new nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point C and Wylfa, and the third runway at Heathrow airport. ...

.... Those rivals are offering as standard the kind of services – food and luggage, in particular – for which Norwegian demands a further £90-100 (if pre-booked), eradicating most of the difference. Add in those, and on some dates, Virgin Atlantic from Heathrow would work out cheaper. ...

....Low-paid cabin crew at British Airways have begun six days of industrial action, as the airline takes an increasingly hard line on strikes by employees. Members of the mixed fleet at Heathrow were set to walk out for most of this week from Sunday in a dispute over what the union, Unite, describes as poverty pay. ...

.... A couple of years back, there would have been shouts of “good riddance” from voters had a bank said it was thinking of shifting staff to Frankfurt or Paris. There would have been queues of people volunteering to drive the bus to Heathrow. ...

....”. The mixed fleet was set up by BA during the bitter industrial dispute between cabin crew and the airline in 2010, and all new recruits now join the branch, which operates both short-haul and long-haul flights from Heathrow. ...

....But Junck said British Steel could still carve out a bright future, despite continuing pressure on the industry. “Domestically we are in a unique position to provide large quantities of steel for developments through the UK, whether that be major infrastructure projects such as HS2 and Heathrow [expansion], or smaller projects such as the building of new schools or hospitals,” he said. ...